The guys at ModernHome.no decided to send me a Summer gift. It turned out to be the Fibaro Dimmer version two. I have had high expectations to the new dimmer but had not gotten around to purchasing one yet so the gift was much appreciated. I recently upgraded my living room downlights to LED type bulbs and the old Fibaro dimmer did not handle them as well as i hoped. Continue to read the review by clicking read more below...

Yes the new Dimmer is physically larger and it handles less load, but it is all because of good reasons:

Load detection

The new dimmer will as a default perform a calibration the first time you enable power to the dimmer. The dimmer cycles the dimmer in two runs and records several data during the cycle to be able to determine what type of light source is controlled by the dimmer.

Due to the dimmers sensors and electronic control it will be able to support both Leading edge and Trailing edge dimming. This means it will be able to handle incandescent and halogen bulbs (resistive), LEDs and other resistive-capacitive bulbs with trailing edge dimming. Leading edge dimming for transformers and other resistive-inductive loads.

Realtime Power Metering

The original dimmer let you set a rough power measurement value based on the wattage of the bulb connected. This way it was able to calculate and simulate the power draw in the circuit. This time around the dimmer will measure in realtime the energy consumption. This also gives other possibilities like alarm on over load in the cirquit or burnt bulps. Notifications of theese alarms will be supported in future versions of Fibaro Home Center´s.

Two & Three Wire installations

The new device will handle both two and ture Three wire installations.

Z wave Plus

The dimmer is Z-Wave Plus enabled meaning it has the new Z-wave 500 chip integrated. This means that the unit has more signaling capabilities. Extended radio range and Over The Air (OTA) software upgrades.

New connection terminals

As some of you might remember some of the Fibaro modules were banned in some Scandinavian countries. This because it did not fulfill the EU standards the way they should. As a result of this Fibaro has integrated new type of connection terminals with an increased isolation spacing and capable of larger cable core dimensions. The new connection terminals also produce less heat.

User friendliness

The new dimmer has an integrated LED status light which changes color based on the level you are in inside the configuration menu. It also indicates faults in the circuit. The Z-Wave include button has also been moved out to the edge of the casing and is much easier to operate. The plastic casing is also much more sturdy compared to the old one. In cramped connection boxes the old dimmer casing would bend from any applied external pressure. This casing will not bend as easily.

Installation and use

As always you can either add the device from a computer or from a mobile unit with the Fibaro app installed. The unit was found immediately and was added to the controller without any problems.

The new dimmer has a lot of configuration possibilities. A complete list of all parameters can be found in the manual. I will not cover them in depth as there as so many. The dimmer is definitely more capable of handling LED Bulbs. As i stated in the introduction i have recently purchased LED lights.

I ended up purchasing the IKEA GU10 Dimmable LED lights. Yes i know IKEA are not renowned for their good electronics but for the specification and price of the units it was worth a try. And believe it or not i was pretty happy with them. They produce a warm light and the dimming was very smooth. The only problem i had with the first gen Fibaro dimmer was that the was a noticeable "summing" noise from the bulbs, even with the Fibaro Dimmer By-pass the noise was present. With the Fibaro dimmer 2 the noise has completely disappeared. This is something i am very happy with.

Summary

I have not yet tested the Qubino Dimmers but i know they are pretty much on par with the Fibaro Dimmer 2. All in all i am very satisfied with the dimmer upgrade. I am also considering upgrading my old ones to the new. I have not been able to test in depth yet but so far it does it´s job and it does it well. Have you tested the Dimmer 2 are you satisfied? leave a comment below and let me know how your experience has been. For all you Norwegians out there, here is a link for purchasing the dimmer at Modernhome.no. Here is a link to the Fibaro homepage for more information on Fibaro products.Oh and just as a warning. Do not use the old Fibaro dimmer bypass on the new dimmer. Fibaro has released a new and optimized one for the Dimmer 2. Mixing these two could potentially damage your dimmer.

Where to buy

Hello sir, I've been following your blog for a while now (after a tip from my colleague Hreidar :)

I'm running HC2 with a few Fibaro Dim v1, a bunch of Qubinos and now got a Fibaro Dim v2 for testing. Use SG Junistar Gyro+Soft (all LED) with both Qubino and now v2 (v1 is useless for these lamps). Qubino have worked flawlessly except for one annoying thing... HC2 isnt always updating status ON/OFF properly (this happened after updating HC2 till v4.054 I think... will soon try what happens whith v4.056 though)

Anyway, looking forward to your in-depth testing of the v2 and all its parameters... By the way, I'm not running lots of fancy scenes and stuff yet due to all the apparent "issues" with HC2 ;) will wait it out a bit before I dive into smarthin'-things-up with code.

Thanks, and keep up the good work on tha' blog!

Reply

Petr

4/10/2015 02:16:25 pm

Hi, thanks for the review. Could you please describe the circuit with ikea leds? My problem with v1 dimmer is that I use 3 wire connection with 5 parallel 230v dimmable philips leds + 1 v1 bypass. The noise it produces at levels other than 100% Is annoying. it was even worse without the bypass. anyway, do you think v2 dimmer could drive parallel 230v dimmable led bulbs without the annoying noise? the noise comes from bulbs, not the dimmer. Cheers, Petr.

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Stian

4/10/2015 09:26:43 pm

This sounds very much like the problem i had. I also have the same setup but two wire so the dimmer is in line. That should not make a difference though. I would assume the noise sissappear, at least it did with my one. I will be installing a dimmer two in one more location soon so I will update my experience here.

Reply

Mike

5/10/2015 01:14:28 am

Looks good :) How do you wire without a switch?

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Stian

11/10/2015 10:58:46 pm

I am not 100% sure what you mean but i guess you want to connect the dimmer directly without any switches, well you can just connect it like normal and do not connect the switches

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Emil

11/10/2015 10:45:11 am

Hi, thanks for a nice review! I am considering buying the Dimmer 2 and I am currently investigating the bypass option since I am not easily going to reach >25W load on some of the downlight rails I need to control as I am using LEDs. Since you did not use a bypass, and had a good experience with dimming, is your load above 25W (which is what I have understand is the minimum load for dimming 230V LEDs)? For what I am aware the bypass for Dimmer2 is not yet for sale so I am assuming this is the case with your setup. And just out of curiosity, if I would be able to reach just above 25W (say 5x 5W LEDs) would I then have problem-free dimming without the bypass?

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Stian Øien

11/10/2015 11:26:52 am

Only one og my dimmed zones have a load above 25W. They all work fine. From my understanding the bypass is needed for setups with LED lights which are not dimmable or lights with a complete load which is very low. The dimmer 2 is able to dim only one of my IKEA lights on its own without trouble. some led's which are not dimmable at not dimmable because it is hard to dim them. with the bypass however you might be able to dim them.

as long as you buy new Dimmable LED's with a good driver in them your Fibaro Dimmer should work fine without the bypass. try firsylt without and if it does not function well or if you get "clipping" then buy the bypass. Remember to buy the one for dimmer two and not the old one as it will damage the dimmer.

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Stian Øien

11/10/2015 11:39:13 am

just need to rephrase a bit. LED's marked as not dimmable will most likely not be dimmable. But some bulpbs may be marked not dimmable because they require a special dimmer to be able do be dimmed. These may be dimmable with Fibaro Dimmer 2 and the bypass

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Emil

11/10/2015 02:21:47 pm

Thanks for clarifying this! A short final question. This is probably very basic z-wave knowledge but I havent't found a clear cut answer. If one would have say 4 of these Dimmer2's and 4 wall switches, would one need the gateway or could these units work one to one on their own (they wouldn't be connected through a gateway but would solve the problem of not having cables from the wall switch to the lights).

Stian

11/10/2015 10:57:23 pm

I am actually not sure if the dimmers will work directly to each other without a controller. send an e mail to Fibaro and ask. in theory it should work. I am not sure if input two is classed as a z wave controller or just an input for the central controller to do the association. if you want I can test later today.

Reply

Emil

12/10/2015 01:35:00 am

If it is not much trouble for you, that would be great. It is a little unclear to me how a setup of multiple controllers/switches would work withtout the gateway. Some forums say it is critical to have gateway, others say you only miss the advanced control features (like scenes) and internet access, but they still create a meshwork with command hopping etc.. This is mainly out of curiosity as I am going to get a gateway anyways, so don't make a mess of things unless you share my curiosity!

Stian Øien

12/10/2015 04:43:07 am

Well it is no problem to test it out of curiosity like you said. but I can almost guarantee you that you will not get the mesh network like you are exolaining. to make that happen you need all devices on same network. so if you use input 2 on a dimmer towards another dimmer you onluly have two dimmers in a "mesh" network. to achieve a proper mesh you need multiple devices in the same network. a proper controller or a z wave remote with multiple channels paired with many devices will create a worhty mesh network.

Reply

Stian Øien

12/10/2015 04:43:39 am

something wrong in the comment section so I am sorry if the reply is in the wrong order

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Emil

12/10/2015 09:17:42 am

After a bit more googling I agree with you that the mesh needs the gateway to work. It seems possible to pair a switch to a dimmer if they can talk directly but it does take the "smart" out of "smarthome". Thanks for your help!

Ajerazzor

9/5/2016 06:19:07 am

Hi jade you done any more in depth on this dimmer? I have one with some 12w LEDs that support trailing or leading edge dimming. With trailing they don't dim past about 25% and with leading they dim nicely but there is a slight flicker and I believe they should be trailing edge anyway - have you found any issues?

Reply

Steppi

18/5/2016 11:45:05 pm

Hello everyone!
I have a system of Domoticz Raspi2 + Z-Wave USB.
I connected a Fibaro Dimmer2 4 LED spotlights.
Issue: When I turn on the dimmer2 from Domoticz the lights turn on and off quickly, so even if I try sometimes.
The system to fix the problem is to move the% bar and then stabilizes and it works, I have to do this every time I turn on.
Maybe I should touch the advanced parameters from
Config-Hardware-OpenZwave-Config-FibaroDimmer2